National Liberation Front

The National Liberation Front (NLF) was a mass political organization in South Vietnam which existed from 20 December 1960 to 2 July 1976 as the political wing of the Viet Cong.

The National Liberation Front was formed on 20 December 1960 by the government of North Vietnam to foment revolution against the fanatical Catholic dictator Ngo Dinh Diem in the South. The People's Revolutionary Party, the Radical Socialist Party, and the Democratic Party of Vietnam collaborated to form the NLF, which ostensibly embraced all shades of opposition to Diem's government. It included former Viet Minh resistance members, leaders of outlawed political parties and organizations, intellectuals driven to desperation by the suppression of liberal thought, peasants who were alienated by the Strategic Hamlet Program, members of the Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, and Binh Xuyen armed religious sects, persecuted Buddhist leaders, and ethnic minorities who were oppressed by Diem's government. The NLF represented a vast array of different ethnic, political, and social groups, and the First Congress of the NLF was held from 16 February to 3 March 1962. The NLF operated clandestinely under leadership not openly communist, but long associated with the Viet Minh resistance, and it was organized on the national and local level, paralelling South Vietnam's political structure. The NLF had its own flag, radio and press services, and a liberation army nicknamed the "Viet Cong" ("Vietnamese communists"), and it engaged in semi-governmental activities in rural areas and abroad, seeking international support. It commanded considerable rural allegiance, forced or voluntary, but attracted few supporters from the non-communist opposition. The NLF called for the South Vietnamese to overthrow the American-backed South Vietnamese regime throughout the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, and its Viet Cong guerrillas worked hand-in-hand with the North Vietnamese PAVN regulars to fight against the US, the ARVN, and their allies during the Vietnam War. In 1976, after the reunification of Vietnam, the NLF and its urban counterpart, the Alliance of National, Democratic, and Peace Forces, merged with the Communist Party of Vietnam to form the Vietnamese Fatherland Front.